Worms Hit Home

It's early in 2004 and Microsoft is sick with nearly 65,000 viruses, it's crawling with worms, and there are enough packaged trojans sitting around to wreak havoc on almost any virile computer. It would be nice for security professionals to afford a week off from the world of viruses, worms, trojans, and backdoors to enjoy a long overdue vacation, but we all know the malevolent attempts of the next major outbreak are just around the corner. The fact that each of us can only control and manage the patches and virus definitions on machines within our own borders means little as we watch the promulgation of malcode on millions of home machines outside of our control.

My experience with large corporate and enterprise environments is that most administrators and security professionals do a pretty good job of keeping desktop-borne viruses at bay, and instead focus on more important issues. Larger organizations tend to have a formalized patch management process for desktops and servers that prevent the spread of worms, as well as a long-standing process for updating virus software and definitions. In some cases multiple A/V vendors are used and multiple patch management solutions in the never-ending quest for layered security. Border gateways are hardened, acceptable services in and out of the protected network are kept to a minimum, and in some cases managed alert services are used to try and foresee new and upcoming malcode events.

Read Full Story